About 95% of pancreatic cancer cases are adenocarcinomas. The overall five-year survival rate of pancreatic adenocarcinoma is about 5%. It is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Pancreatic cancer often recurs after initial treatment despite the use of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. At present, there is no effective treatment for pancreatic cancer. The most commonly used medicine to treat pancreatic cancer is gemcitabine (GEM), a pyrimidine nucleoside drug, but it is only moderately effective.
Two monoclonal antibody (mAbs) drugs currently in clinical trial for targeted therapy against pancreatic cancers are cetuximab and bevacizumab, targeting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), respectively. However, clinical trial data showed that using either cetuximab or bevacizumab, in combination with small molecule drugs had no significant improvement in the overall survival of pancreatic cancer patients.
Therefore, it is important to identify a suitable target for developing targeted therapy against pancreatic cancer.